Specifications

Page 6
ROM August — September 2007
HD DVD optical drives. As I don’t have
any high def equipment I was unable to test
this. Another new feature is the ability to
create HD DVD–compatible discs on leg-
acy DVD-R/+R drives, but as I have stan-
(Continued from page 5) dard DVD players and a standard televi-
sion, I couldn’t test this feature (I do have a
DVD player with a HDMI output and a
projector with an HDMI input, but I’ve
never bothered to get the cable to connect
the two, as I’m
quite happy with
standard DVD resolution at the moment). If
you don’t want this feature, or the ability to
encode to the H.264 MP4 format or export to
an iPod, then you can get the standard version
of the software.
Vista Support
There is Vista Support for the latest-
generation systems and Intel Core 2 Duo sup-
port.
It is important to remember that all this talk
of dual core processors in TV adverts and
sales of computers only makes a difference to
your PC system if the software is written to
take advantage of them.
Conclusions
My main problem with VideoStudio 11 Plus
is that while all the new additions are worth-
while and appreciated, it’s hardly a quantum
leap over the previous version. If you’ve al-
ready bought last year’s VideoStudio 10 Plus,
only the MPEG optimiser and Pause button
will immediately leap out as genuine new
features
Pricing & Availability
Online from Amazon.co.uk for £49.98 (Plus
version) or £38.48 for the less well specified
Standard Version.
Norton Ghost 12 Reviewed by Tony Hawes
Rendering Indicator with Pause Button
The MPEG Optimiser
As we’ve mentioned in ROM so many
times before no matter how new your PC is
or how much you paid for it, there’s a
chance that at some stage it will go wrong.
Your computer’s hard disk stores your
programs, all the files your PC needs to
load Windows and any documents, pic-
tures, music and other information you’ve
saved. If it fails, you could lose it all.
Symantec have recently launched Norton
Ghost 12 and Symantec say Ghost 12 takes
data and system protection to the next level
with powerful new features such as remote
management, Google Desktop integration,
and LightsOut Restore. Support for one-to-
one remote management enables users to
back up other Norton Ghost clients on the
network. Integration with Google Desktop
allows users to create searchable backup
indexes to make recovering data even
faster. LightsOut Restore enables users to
restore their systems from a remote location
via an on-disk software recovery environ-
ment, obviating the need to use a bootable
CD. Norton Ghost 12 also includes a soft-
ware recovery disk that allows users to start
their computers, scan for viruses or hard
disk errors, and launch the recovery process
even if the operating system does not start.
In addition, with Norton Ghost 12, users
can now choose to do full system backups
or to back up only specific files and folders,
or both! Backups include encryption and
error checking to keep data safe, while
compression, incremental backups, and
automatic backup file management mini-
mizes storage space. Users can also use
Norton Ghost to convert recovery points of
a physical computer to a virtual disk. Addi-
tionally, users can leverage Norton Ghost
for customisable, event-triggered backups
that automatically protect systems when
specific events occur.
As a great believer in Sod’s Law and the
axiom “Anything that can go wrong, will”,
especially when applied to computers, I guar-
antee at some time your computer will go
wrong, so it’s essential that you back up your
PC regularly. But backup software can be
complicated and many people simply don’t
bother. You could safeguard just a few critical
files by copying them to a CD or a flash mem-
ory drive, but you might miss something vital.
Norton Ghost 12 is a disk-imaging program
that lets you create a complete copy of your
hard disk as an image. In the event of a prob-
lem, you can restore your PC and all its files
to a complete working state. If you should
ever have a major hard disk failure, this disk
image is all you need to restore your copy of
Windows, your applications, files and all your
settings to what they were at the time you
made the image.
Ghost 10 was the last version I looked at so
I was keen to see what version 12 does that
version 10 didn’t. Essentially Ghost 12 still
works in the same way but Symantec have
made some changes to the user interface and
the terminology it uses. As with Ghost 10,
Ghost 12 backup images are called recovery
points and whereas most other manufacture’s
backup programs retain the original terminol-
ogy in calling backed-up images “images”,
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